by Paulo Coelho
"Let's stop here," he said.
I didn't want to get oil stains on my pants, so I decided to stand. I asked him if he wouldn't prefer to walk to the main square of Ponferrada.
"The Road to Santiago is about to end," said my guide, "and since our reality is a lot more similar to these railroad cars, stinking of oil, than to the bucolic retreats we have encountered during our journey, it is better that today's conversation happen here."
Petrus told me to take off my sneakers and my shirt. Then he loosened the bandages on my arms, leaving them freer to move. But he left those on my hands as they were.
"Don't worry," he said. "You are not going to need your hands for this, at least not to hold anything."
He was more serious than usual, and his tone of voice surprised me. Something important was about to happen.
Petrus sat down again on the steps of the locomotive and looked at me for a long time. Then he said, "I am not going to say anything about yesterday's episode. You will discover for yourself what it means, and this will happen only if some-day you decide to walk the Road to Rome--the Road of the graces and miracles. I want to tell you just one thing: people who consider themselves to be wise are often indecisive when command is called for and rebellious when they are called upon to obey. They are ashamed to give orders and consider it dishonorable to receive them. Don't ever be that way.
"In the room, you said that the path to wisdom leads to sacrifice. That is wrong. Your learning period did not end yesterday: you still have to find your sword and learn its secret. The RAM practices allow us to engage in the good fight and to have a better chance at winning in life. The experience you had yesterday was only one of the tests along the Road--it was part of the preparation for the Road to Rome. It saddens me that you thought that it might have been the death of you."
He really sounded saddened. I realized that throughout all the time we had spent together, I had always expressed doubt regarding what he was teaching me. I was not a strong, humble Castaneda receiving his teachings from Don Juan; I was an arrogant and fractious man in my approach to the simple RAM practices. I wanted to say this to Petrus, but I knew that it was too late.
"Close your eyes," Petrus said. "Do the RAM Breathing Exercise, and try to harmonize yourself with this iron, this machinery, and this smell of oil. This is our world. You should open your eyes only when I have completed teaching you an exercise."
I closed my eyes, concentrated on the RAM breathing, and felt my body begin to relax. I could hear the noises of the city, some dogs barking in the distance, and the sound of voices in argument not far from where we were. Suddenly, I began to hear Petrus's voice singing an Italian song recorded by Pepino Di Capri that had been a hit when I was a teenager. I didn't understand the words, but the melody brought back happy memories and helped me to reach a state of tranquillity.
"Some time ago," he began, when he had stopped singing, "as I was working on a project that I had to deliver to the mayor's office in Milan, I received a message from my Master. Someone had gone all the way to the end of the road of the Tradition and had not received his sword. I was supposed to guide him along the Road to Santiago.
"I was not surprised at this: I had been expecting such a summons at any time, because I had not yet paid my dues. I had to guide a pilgrim along the Milky Way, just as I had once been guided. But I was nervous because it was the first and only time that I would do this, and I did not know how to carry out my mission."
Petrus's words really surprised me. I thought that he had been a guide dozens of times.
"You came here, and I guided you," he continued. "I must confess that in the beginning it was very hard, because you were much more interested in the intellectual implications of the teachings than in the true meaning of the Road--the Road of the common people. After the encounter with Alfonso, we developed a much stronger, more intense relationship, and I began to believe that I would be able to teach you the secret of your sword. But this did not happen, and now you will have to learn it for yourself during the little time you have left."
This conversation was making me nervous, and I was losing my concentration on the RAM Breathing Exercise. Petrus must have noticed, because he began to sing the song again and stopped only when I was once again relaxed.
"If you discover the secret and find your sword, you will also discover the face of RAM, and you will have the power. But that is not all: in order to achieve total wisdom, you will have to walk the other three Roads, including the secret one, and the secret Road will not be revealed to you, even by someone who has walked it. I am telling you this because we are going to see each other only one more time."
My heart stopped, and involuntarily, I opened my eyes. Petrus was glowing with the kind of brilliance I had only seen around my Master.
"Close your eyes!" he barked, and I immediately obeyed. But I was very upset, and I could not concentrate anymore. My guide started to sing the Italian song again, and only after a while was I able to relax.
"Tomorrow you are going to receive a note telling you where I am. I will be at a group initiation, a ritual of honor in the Tradition. It is a ritual in honor of all of the men and women who, down through the centuries, have helped to keep alive the flame of wisdom, of the good fight, and of agape. You will not be able to speak to me. The place where we will meet is secret. It is bathed in the blood of all those who have walked the road of the Tradition and who, even with their swords sharpened, were unable to brighten the darkness. But their sacrifice was not in vain, and the proof that it was not is that, centuries later, those who have walked different roads will be there to pay them tribute. This is important, and you should never forget it: even if you become a Master, you have to realize that your road is only one of many that lead to God. Jesus once said, 'In my Father's house, there are many mansions.'"
Petrus repeated that after tomorrow, I would not see him again.
"On some future day, you will receive a message from me, asking you to lead someone along the Road to Santiago, just as I have led you. Then you will be able to experience the great secret of the journey--a secret that I am going to reveal to you now, but only through words. It is a secret that has to be experienced to be understood."
There was a prolonged silence. I began to think that he had changed his mind or that he had left the train yard. I felt an enormous desire to open my eyes to see what was happening, but I forced myself to concentrate on the RAM breathing.
"The secret is the following," Petrus said. "You can learn only through teaching. We have been together here on the Road to Santiago, but while you were learning the practices, I learned the meaning of them. In teaching you, I truly learned. By taking on the role of guide, I was able to find my own true path.
"If you succeed in finding your sword, you will have to teach the Road to someone else. And only when that happens--when you accept your role as a Master--will you learn all the answers you have in your heart. Each of us knows the answers, even before someone tells us what they are. Life teaches us lessons every minute, and the secret is to accept that only in our daily lives can we show ourselves to be as wise as Solomon and as powerful as Alexander the Great. But we become aware of this only when we are forced to teach others and to participate in adventures as extravagant as this one has been."
I was hearing the most unexpected farewell in my life. The person with whom I had had the most intense bond was saying good-bye right there in midjourney--in an oily-smelling train yard, with me forced to keep my eyes closed.
"I don't like saying good-bye," Petrus continued. "I am Italian, and I am very emotional. But according to the law of the Tradition, you must find your sword alone. This is the only way that you will believe in your own power. I have passed on to you everything that I have to give. The only thing left is the Dance Exercise, which I am going to teach you now; you should perform it tomorrow at the ritual."
He was silent for a while, and then he spoke:
"May that which is gl
orified be glorified in the Lord. You may open your eyes."
Petrus was still sitting on the locomotive. I did not want to say anything, because I am Brazilian and also emotional. The mercury lamp providing us with light began to flutter, and a train whistled in the distance, announcing its next stop.
It was then that Petrus taught me the Dance Exercise.
The Dance Exercise
Relax. Close your eyes.
Recall the first songs you heard as a child. Begin to sing them in your thoughts. Little by little, let a certain part of your body--your feet, your stomach, your hands, your head, and so on--but only one part, begin to dance to the melody you are singing.
After five minutes, stop singing, and listen to the sounds all around you. Compose an internal melody based on them, and dance to it with your whole body. Don't think about anything in particular, but try to memorize the images that spontaneously appear.
The dance offers an almost-perfect means of communication with the Infinite Intelligence.
This exercise should last fifteen minutes.
"One more thing," he said, looking deeply into my eyes. "When I completed my pilgrimage, I painted a beautiful, immense picture that depicted everything that had happened to me here. This is the Road of the common people, and you can do the same thing, if you like. If you don't know how to paint, write something, or create a ballet. Then, regardless of where they are, people will be able to walk the Jacobean route, the Milky Way, the Strange Road to Santiago."
The train that had sounded its whistle began to enter the station. Petrus waved to me and disappeared between the parked railroad cars. I stood there amid the noise of brakes screeching on steel, trying to decipher the mysterious Milky Way over my head, those stars that had guided me here and that had silently watched over the loneliness and destiny of all human beings.
Next day, there was just a note left in my room: 7:00 P.M.--CASTLE OF THE TEMPLARS.
I spent the rest of that afternoon walking around the streets aimlessly. I crossed and recrossed the small city of Ponferrada, looking from a distance at the castle on the hill where I had been bidden to appear. The Templars had always stirred my imagination, and the castle in Ponferrada was not the only mark made on the Jacobean route by their order. The order had been created by nine knights who had decided not to return from the Crusades. Within a short time, their power had spread throughout Europe, and they had caused a revolution in the values at the beginning of this millennium. While most of the nobility of the time was concerned only with enriching itself through the labor of the serfs, the Knights Templar dedicated their lives, their fortunes, and their swords to one cause only: the protection of the pilgrims that walked the Road to Jerusalem. In the behavior of the Knights, the pilgrims found a model for their own search for wisdom.
In III8, when Hugh de Payens and eight other knights held a meeting in the courtyard of an old, abandoned castle, they took a vow of love for all humanity. Two centuries later, there were more than five thousand benefices spread throughout the known world; they reconciled two activities that until then had appeared to be incompatible: the military life and the religious one. Donations from the members and from grateful pilgrims allowed the Order of the Knights Templars to accumulate incalculable wealth, which was used more than once to ransom important Christians who had been kidnapped by the Muslims. The honesty of the Knights was such that kings and nobles entrusted their valuables to the Templars and traveled only with a document that attested to the existence of their wealth. This document could be redeemed at any castle of the Order of the Templars for an equivalent sum, giving rise to the letter of credit that is used today.
Their spiritual devotion, in turn, had allowed the Knights Templars to understand the great truth that Petrus had quoted the night before: that the house of the Lord has many mansions. They sought to put an end to religious conflict and to unite the main monotheistic religions of the time: Christian, Jewish, and Islamic. Their chapels were built with the rounded cupola of the Judaic temples of Solomon, the octagonal walls of the Arab mosques, and the naves that were typical of Christian churches.
But as with everything that happens before its time, the Templars came to be viewed with suspicion. The great kings sought to hold economic power, and religious liberalism was regarded as a threat to the Church. On Friday, October 13, 1307, the Vatican and the major European states unleashed one of the most massive police operations of the Middle Ages: during the night, the main leaders of the Templars were seized in their castles and thrown in prison. They were accused of practicing secret ceremonies, including the worship of the devil, of blasphemy against Jesus Christ, of orgiastic rituals, and of engaging in sodomy with their apprentices. Following a violent sequence of torture, renunciation, and treason, the Order of the Templars was erased from the map of medieval history. Their treasures were confiscated, and their members scattered throughout the world. The last master of the Order, Jacques de Molay, was burned at the stake in the center of Paris, along with a fellow Knight. His last request was that he be allowed "to die looking at the towers of the Cathedral of Notre Dame."
Spain, which was struggling to recapture the Iberian peninsula, welcomed the Knights fleeing from other parts of Europe, and the Spanish kings sought their help in the battles against the Moors. These Knights were absorbed into the Spanish orders, one of which was the Order of San Tiago of the Sword, responsible for protection along the Road.
I was thinking about this history when, exactly at seven in the evening, I passed through the main gate of the old Castle of the Templars of Ponferrada, where I was scheduled for an encounter with the Tradition.
There was no one there. I waited for half an hour and then began to fear the worst: that the ritual must have been at 7:00 A.M. But just as I was deciding to leave, two boys appeared, carrying the flag of Holland and with the scallop shell--the symbol of the Road to Santiago--sewn to their clothing. They came up to me, and we exchanged some words, concluding that we were there for the same purpose. I was relieved that the note had not been wrong.
Every fifteen minutes someone else arrived. There were an Australian, five Spaniards, and another man from Holland. Other than a few questions about the schedule--about which everyone was confused--we did not talk at all. We all sat together in the same part of the castle--a ruined atrium that had served as a storeroom for food in ancient times--and we decided to wait until something happened, even if we had to wait another day and night.
The waiting went on, and we fell to talking about the reasons we were there. It was then that I learned that the road to Santiago is used by a number of different orders, most of them part of the Tradition. The people who were there had already been through many tests and initiations of the kind that I had gone through long ago in Brazil. Only the Australian and I were expecting to be conferred the highest degree of the first Road. Even without knowing the details, I could see that the process the Australian had gone through was completely different from the RAM practices.
At about 8:45, as we were beginning to talk about our personal lives, a gong rang. We followed the sound to the ancient chapel of the castle.
There we found an impressive scene. The chapel--or what remained of it, since most of it was in ruins--was illuminated only by torches. Where there had once been an altar could be seen seven figures garbed in the secular costumes of the Templars: a hood and steel helmet, a coat of mail, a sword, and a shield. I gasped: it was a scene from the distant past. All that made the situation seem real were our own suits and jeans and our shirts with the scallop shell emblem.
Even with the faint illumination provided by the torches, I could see that one of the Knights was Petrus.
"Approach your Masters," said the Knight who appeared to be the oldest. "Look into the eyes of your Master. Take off your clothes and receive your vestments."
I went to Petrus and looked deeply into his eyes. He was in a kind of trance and seemed not to recognize me. But I could see in his eyes a certa
in sadness, the same sadness that his voice had conveyed on the previous night. I took all of my clothes off, and Petrus handed me a perfumed black tunic that fell loosely around my body. I surmised that one of the Masters had more than one disciple, but I could not see which he was because of the requirement that I keep my eyes fixed on those of Petrus.
The High Priest directed us to the center of the chapel, and two Knights began to trace a circle around us as they chanted: "Trinitas, Sother, Messias, Emmanuel, Sabahot, Adonai, Athanatos, Jesus..."1
The circle was being drawn to provide the protection needed for those within it. I noticed that four of us had white tunics, signifying vows of total chastity.
"Amides, Throdonias, Anitor!" intoned the High Priest. "By the grace of the angels, Lord, I provide the vestment of salvation; I pray that everything I desire be transformed into reality, through thee, O my sacred Adonai, whose kingdom is forever. Amen!"
The High Priest placed over his coat of mail the white mantle with the Templar's Cross outlined in red in the center. The other Knights did the same.
It was exactly nine o'clock, the hour of Mercury, the messenger. And there I was, once again within the circle of the Tradition. There was an incense of mint, basil, and benjamin burning in the chapel, and the grand invocation of the Knights began:
"O great and glorious King, who rules through the power of the Supreme God, EL, over all higher and lower spirits, but especially over the Infernal Order of the Dominion of the East, I invoke you...so that I may realize my wish, whatever that may be, so long as it is proper to your labors, through the power of our God, EL, who created and provided all things celestial, of the air, of the earth, and of the infernal realm."
A profound silence followed, and even without being able to see him, we could sense the presence of the being who had been the object of the invocation. This was the consecration of the ritual, a propitious sign that we should continue with our magical activities. I had already participated in hundreds of similar ceremonies, at some of which the results up to this point had been much more surprising. But the Castle of the Templars must have stimulated my imagination a little, because I thought I saw, hovering in the corner of the chapel, a kind of shining bird that I had never seen before.
