by Paulo Coelho
"We split up when we learned about Soul Mates."
"If you hadn't found out about those points of light or the special light in your Soul Mate's eyes, would you still be together?"
"I don't know. I only know that if we were, it wouldn't work for either of us. We only understand life and the Universe when we find our Soul Mate."
Brida paused for a moment, suddenly lost for words. It was the Magus who took up the conversation.
"Let's go," he said, after taking only a sip of the wine from that third bottle. "I need to feel the wind and the cold air on my face."
"He's getting drunk," she thought. "And he's afraid." She felt proud of herself; she could take her drink better than he could, and she wasn't in the least afraid of losing control. She had come out that night intending to enjoy herself.
"Just a little more. After all, I'm the King of the Night."
The Magus drank another glass, but he knew he had reached his limit.
"You haven't asked me anything about myself," she said challengingly. "Aren't you curious? Or can you use your powers to see right through me?"
For a fraction of a second, she felt she had gone too far, but then she dismissed the thought. She merely noticed a change in the Magus's eyes; there was a completely different light in them now. Something in Brida seemed to open, or, rather, she had the sense of a wall coming down, a feeling that, from then on, everything would be permitted. She remembered the last time they had been together, her desire to stay with him, and his coldness. Now she understood that she hadn't gone there that night in order to thank him, but to seek revenge: to tell him that she'd discovered the Force with another man, a man she loved.
"Why do I need revenge? Why am I angry with him?" she wondered, but the wine wouldn't allow her to answer those questions coherently.
The Magus was looking at the young woman opposite him, and the desire to demonstrate his Power kept coming and going in his mind. On a night very like this, many years ago, his whole life had changed. It might have been the age of the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, but there were also people around at the time in search of unknown forces, forces they didn't even believe in. They made use of magical powers while still thinking that they were stronger than the powers themselves, convinced that they'd be able to leave the Tradition as soon as boredom set in. He had been one of those people. He had entered the sacred world through the Tradition of the Moon, learning rituals and crossing the bridge that connects the visible and the invisible.
At first, he dabbled in these powers on his own, learning from books, with no help from anyone. Then he met his Teacher. At their first meeting, his Teacher told him that he would be better off learning through the Tradition of the Sun, but the Magus didn't want that. The Tradition of the Moon was more interesting; it involved performing ancient rituals and learning the wisdom of time. And so his Teacher taught him the Tradition of the Moon, saying that perhaps this was the path that would eventually lead him to the Tradition of the Sun.
At the time, he was utterly sure of himself, of life, and of his conquests. A brilliant career lay ahead of him, and he intended using the Tradition of the Moon to achieve his goals. In order to do so, witchcraft demanded that he first become a Teacher, and that he never infringe the one limitation placed on all Teachers of the Tradition of the Moon: never to interfere with another person's free will. He could forge his own path in the world by using his magical knowledge, but he couldn't get rid of someone simply because they were in his way nor could he force them to follow him on his path. That was the one prohibition, the only tree of whose fruit he must not eat.
And everything went smoothly until he fell in love with one of his Teacher's other students, and she fell in love with him. Both knew the Traditions; he knew that he was not her man, and she knew that she was not his woman. Nevertheless, they surrendered to their love, leaving life in charge of separating them when the time came. Far from diminishing their passion, this only made them live each moment as if it were their last, and the love between them had all the intensity of things that take on an eternal quality precisely because they're going to die.
Then one day, she met another man. This man knew nothing of the Traditions, nor did he have a point of light above his left shoulder or the special light in his eyes that reveals someone to be your Soul Mate. Love, however, is no respecter of reasons, and she fell in love; as far as she was concerned, her time with the Magus had come to an end.
They quarreled and fought; he begged and implored. He subjected himself to all the usual humiliations endured by people in love. He learned things he never dreamed he would learn: hope, fear, acceptance. "He doesn't have the point of light above his left shoulder," he argued, "you told me that yourself." But she didn't care. Before she did finally meet her Soul Mate, she wanted to know other men, to experience the world.
The Magus set a limit on his pain. When he reached it, he would forget all about her. For a reason he could now no longer remember, he did reach that limit, but instead of forgetting her, he discovered that his Teacher was right--emotions were like wild horses and it required wisdom to be able to control them. His passion was stronger than all his years of studying the Tradition of the Moon, stronger than all the mind-control techniques he had learned, stronger than the rigid discipline to which he'd had to submit in order to get where he was. Passion was a blind force, and it kept whispering in his ear that he must not lose that woman.
He could do nothing against her; she was a Teacher, like him, and she had learned her trade over many incarnations, some filled with fame and glory, others marked by fire and suffering. She would know how to defend herself.
However, there was a third party involved in this furious struggle. A man caught in destiny's mysterious web, a web that neither Magi nor Witches can understand. An ordinary man, perhaps as in love with that woman as he was, a man who wanted her to be happy and to do his best for her. An ordinary man, whom Providence's mysterious designs had thrown into the middle of this battle between a man and a woman who knew the Tradition of the Moon.
One night, when he could stand the pain no longer, he ate of the forbidden fruit. Using the power and knowledge that the wisdom of Time had taught him, he removed that man from the woman he loved.
He did not know to this day whether or not she ever found out, but it may well be that she had already grown tired of her new conquest and didn't much mind his leaving. However, his Teacher knew. His Teacher always knew everything, and the Tradition of the Moon was implacable with those Initiates who used Black Magic, especially to influence that most important and most vulnerable of human emotions: Love.
When he confronted his Teacher, he understood that the sacred vow he had made was impossible to break. He understood that the forces he thought he could control and use were far more powerful than he was. He understood that he was on his chosen path, but that it was not a path like any other. And he understood that in this incarnation he could never leave that path.
Now that he had erred, he had to pay a price, and the price was to drink that cruellest of poisons--loneliness--until Love felt that he had once more been transformed into a Teacher. Then, the same Love that he had wounded would set him free again and finally reveal his Soul Mate to him.
You haven't asked me anything about myself. Aren't you curious? Or can you use your powers to see right through me?"
His past took no more than a second to flash through his mind, just long enough for him to decide whether to allow things to happen as they would in the Tradition of the Sun or to speak to her about the point of light and thus interfere in fate.
Brida wanted to be a witch, but she hadn't yet achieved that ambition. He remembered the cabin high up in the tree, when he had come very close to telling her; now he was tempted again, because, having lowered his guard, he had forgotten that the Devil is in the detail. We are all masters of our own destiny. We can so easily make the same mistakes over and over. We can so easily flee from everything that we d
esire and which life so generously places before us.
Alternatively, we can surrender ourselves to Divine Providence, take God's hand, and fight for our dreams, believing that they always arrive at the right moment.
"Let's go," said the Magus. And Brida could see that this time he was serious.
She made a point of paying the bill; after all, she was the King of the Night. They put on their coats and went out into the cold, which was now less bitter--in a matter of weeks, it would be spring.
They walked together to the bus station. A bus was due to leave in a few minutes. Out in the cold, Brida's feelings of irritation were replaced by a terrible confusion, which she could not explain. She didn't want to get on that bus; everything was wrong; it seemed to her that she'd entirely failed to achieve her main objective of the evening and that she needed to put everything right before she left. She had come there to thank him, and yet she was behaving just as she had on the previous two occasions.
She didn't get on the bus, saying that she felt sick.
Fifteen minutes passed, and another bus arrived.
"I don't want to leave," she said, "not because I drank too much and feel ill, but because I've spoiled everything. I haven't thanked you as I should have."
"This is the last bus," said the Magus.
"I'll get a taxi later, even if it's expensive."
When the bus left, Brida regretted not having got on it. She was confused. She had no idea what she wanted. "I'm drunk," she thought, and said:
"Let's go for a walk. I need to sober up."
They strolled through the empty village, with the streetlamps lit and all the windows dark. "It's just not possible. I saw the light in Lorens's eyes and yet I want to stay here with this man." She was just an ordinary, fickle woman, unworthy of all that she had learned and experienced through witchcraft. She was ashamed of herself: all it took was a few glasses of wine, and Lorens--her Soul Mate--and everything she'd learned in the Tradition of the Moon were suddenly of no importance. She wondered briefly if she'd been wrong, perhaps the light in Lorens's eyes wasn't the light spoken of in the Tradition of the Sun. But, no, she was merely fooling herself; no one can fail to recognize the light in the eyes of their Soul Mate.
If she were to meet Lorens in a crowded theater, without ever having spoken to him before, the moment their eyes met, she would know for sure that he was the man for her. She would find a way of approaching him, and he would welcome her approaches, because the Traditions are never wrong: Soul Mates always find each other in the end. Long before she knew anything about Soul Mates, she had often heard people speak about that inexplicable phenomenon: Love at First Sight.
Any human being could recognize that light, without any need for magical powers. She had known about it before she knew of its existence. She had seen it, for example, in the Magus's eyes, the first time they went to the pub together.
She stopped.
"I'm drunk," she thought again. She must simply forget all about it. She needed to count her money to see if she had enough for a taxi fare back. That was important.
But she had seen the light in the Magus's eyes, the light that showed he was her Soul Mate.
"You're very pale," said the Magus. "You must have drunk too much."
"It will pass. Let's sit down for a while until it does. Then I'll go home."
They sat on a bench while she fumbled around in her bag in search of money. She could stand up, find a taxi, and leave forever; she had a Teacher and she knew how to continue her path. She knew her Soul Mate, too; if she decided to get up now and leave, she would still be fulfilling the mission God had set her.
She might only be twenty-one, but she already knew it was possible to encounter two Soul Mates in the same incarnation, and that the result was bound to be pain and suffering.
How could she avoid that?
"I'm not going home," she said. "I'm staying here."
The Magus's eyes shone, and what had been only a hope became a certainty.
They continued walking. The Magus watched Brida's aura change color many times and hoped she was taking the right path. He understood the storms and earthquakes shaking the soul of his Soul Mate, but he knew that this was in the nature of transformations. That's how the earth and the stars and mankind are transformed.
They left the village and were walking out into the countryside, toward the mountains where they always met, when Brida asked him to stop.
"Let's go this way," she said, turning down a path that led into a wheat field, although why she didn't know. She simply felt a sudden need to feel the force of nature and the friendly spirits who, ever since the world was created, have inhabited all the lovely places of the planet. A huge moon was shining in the sky, illuminating the path and the countryside around.
Without a word, the Magus followed. Deep in his heart, he thanked God for having believed and for not allowing him to make the same mistake again, as he had been on the point of doing just a minute before his prayers were answered.
They walked through the wheat field, which was transformed by the moonlight into a silver sea. Brida was walking aimlessly, with no idea what her next step would be. A voice inside her was telling her that she should go forward, that she was just as strong as her forebears, and that there was no need to worry, because they were there guiding her steps and protecting her with the Wisdom of Time.
They stopped in the middle of the field. They were surrounded by mountains, and on one of those mountains was a rock from which one could get a fine view of the sunset; there was a hunters' cabin, too, higher up than all the others, and a place where, one night, a young woman had confronted fear and darkness.
"I'm ready," she thought to herself. "I'm ready and I know I'm protected." She conjured up the image of the candle at home always burning, her seal with the Tradition of the Moon.
"Here's a good place," she said, stopping.
She picked up a twig and traced a large circle in the earth while she recited the sacred names her Teacher had taught her. She didn't have her ritual dagger with her, she had none of her sacred objects, but her ancestors were there, and they were telling her that, in order not to be burned at the stake, they had consecrated their kitchen utensils.
"Everything in this world is sacred," she said. That twig was sacred.
"Yes," responded the Magus. "Everything in this world is sacred, and a grain of sand can be a bridge to the invisible."
"At this moment, though, the bridge to the invisible is my Soul Mate," Brida said.
His eyes filled with tears. God was just.
The two of them entered the circle, and she ritually closed it. This was the protective gesture that Magi and Witches had used since time immemorial.
"You were generous enough to show me your world," said Brida. "I perform this ritual now to show that I belong to that world."
She raised her arms to the moon and invoked the magical forces of nature. She had often seen her Teacher do this when they went to the wood, but now she was doing it, confident that nothing would go wrong. The forces were telling her that she did not need to learn anything; she had only to remember the many times she had done this in her many lives as a witch. She prayed then that the harvest would be good, and that the field would always be fertile. There she was, the priestess who, in other ages, had brought together the earth's knowledge and the transformation of the seed, and had prayed while her man was working the land.
The Magus let Brida take the initial steps. He knew that, at a certain point, he would have to take control, but he needed to leave recorded on space and time the fact that she had begun the process. His Teacher, who, at that moment, was wandering some astral plane awaiting his next life, was there in that field of wheat, just as he had been there in the pub, during his last temptation, and he was doubtless happy that his student had learned from his suffering. The Magus listened in silence to Brida's invocations. When she stopped, she said:
"I don't know why I have done all this, but
I know I have done my part."
"I'll continue," he said.
Then he turned to the north and imitated the cries of birds that existed now only in myths and legends. That was the only detail that had been lacking. Wicca was a good Teacher and had taught Brida almost everything, apart from the ending.
When the sound of the sacred pelican and the phoenix had been invoked, the whole circle filled with light, a mysterious light, which illuminated nothing around it, but which was, nonetheless, a light. The Magus looked at his Soul Mate and there she was, resplendent in her eternal body, with a golden aura and filaments of light emerging from her navel and her head. He knew that she was seeing the same thing, as well as the point of light above his left shoulder, slightly blurred perhaps because of the wine they'd drunk earlier.
"My Soul Mate," she said softly when she saw the point of light.
"I am going to walk with you through the Tradition of the Moon," said the Magus. And at once the wheat field around them became a gray desert, in which there was a temple with women all in white dancing before the temple's vast door. Brida and the Magus were watching this from high up on a dune, and she didn't know if the people could see her.
She felt the Magus's presence beside her and wanted to ask him what the vision meant, but she could not speak. He saw the fear in her eyes, and they returned to the circle of light in the wheat field.
"What was that?" she asked.
"A present from me to you. That is one of the eleven secret temples of the Tradition of the Moon. A gift of love and gratitude for the fact that you exist and because I have waited so long to find you."
"Take me with you," she said. "Show me how to walk through your world."
And together they traveled through time and space, through the two Traditions. Brida saw meadows full of flowers, animals she had only read about in books, mysterious castles and cities that seemed to float on clouds of light. The sky lit up as the Magus drew for her, above the wheat field, the sacred symbols of the Tradition. At one point, they appeared to be in the icy landscape of one of Earth's two poles, but it was not our planet: other smaller creatures, with long fingers and strange eyes, were working on a vast spaceship. Whenever she was about to say something to him, the images would vanish to be replaced by others. Brida understood with her woman's soul that the man by her side was trying to show her everything he had learned over the years, and that he must have been waiting all this time simply to present her with this gift. He could give himself to her now without fear, because she was his Soul Mate. She could travel with him through the Elysian Fields, where the enlightened souls live, and which are visited now and then by other souls still in search of enlightenment so that they can nourish themselves with hope.