by Paulo Coelho
When she got home, Brida spread out the contents of her wardrobe on the bed. She looked at each item of clothing; there were some she'd completely forgotten about; others brought back happy memories but were no longer fashionable. Brida kept them, though, because they held a special charm, and if she got rid of them, she might be undoing all the good things she had experienced while wearing them.
She looked at the clothes which she felt contained "bad vibrations." She'd always hoped that those bad vibrations might one day become good vibrations and then she would be able to wear the clothes again. However, whenever she put them to the test, the results were invariably disastrous.
She realized that her relationship with clothes was more complicated than she had thought, and yet it was hard to accept Wicca meddling in something as private and personal as the way she dressed. Some clothes had to be kept for special occasions, and only she could say when she should wear them. Others weren't suitable for work or even for going out on the weekend. Why was Wicca so interested in this? She never questioned what Wicca told her to do; she spent her life dancing and lighting candles, plunging knives into water, and learning about rituals she would never use. And she accepted all that because it was part of the Tradition, a Tradition she didn't understand but that was perhaps in touch with her unknown self. But by meddling with her clothes, Wicca was also meddling with her way of being in the world.
Perhaps Wicca had overstepped the bounds of her power. Perhaps she was trying to interfere in things she shouldn't.
"What is outside is harder to change than what is inside."
Someone had said something. Brida instinctively looked around her, knowing that she would find no one.
It was the Voice.
The Voice that Wicca had wanted to awaken.
She managed to curb her feelings of excitement and fear. She remained silent, hoping to hear something else, but there was only the noise from the street, a television some way off, and the omnipresent sound of the world. She tried to sit in the same position as before, to think the same things as before. Everything had happened so fast that she hadn't even felt frightened or surprised or proud.
But the Voice had said something. Even if everyone in the world were to prove to her that it was all just a product of her imagination, even if the witch hunts were to return and she had to stand up in court and risk being burned to death, she was utterly sure that she'd heard a voice that was not her own.
"What is outside is more difficult to change than what is inside." The Voice could perhaps have said something a little more earth shattering, given that this was the first time in her current incarnation that she was hearing it, but suddenly Brida was filled by an intense feeling of joy. She wanted to phone Lorens, to go and see the Magus, to tell Wicca that her Gift had finally been revealed, and that she could now become part of the Tradition of the Moon. She paced the room, smoked a few cigarettes, and only half an hour later did she feel calm enough to sit down again on the bed, along with all her clothes.
The Voice was right. Brida had surrendered her soul to a strange woman and--odd though it might seem--it was far easier to surrender her soul than her way of dressing.
Only now was she beginning to understand how much those apparently meaningless exercises were influencing her life. Only now, when she was considering changing on the outside, could she realize how much she had changed inside.
When they met again, Wicca wanted to know all about the Voice and was pleased that Brida had noted down every detail in her Book of Shadows.
"Whose Voice is it?" asked Brida.
Wicca, however, had more important things to do and say than answer Brida's eternal questions.
"So far, I've shown you how to return to the path that your soul traveled several incarnations ago. I awoke that knowledge by speaking directly to it--with my soul--through the symbols and rituals of our forebears. You might have grumbled a bit about it, but your soul was glad because it was reestablishing contact with its mission. While you were getting irritated with all the exercises you had to do, feeling bored with the dancing and having to fight off sleep during rituals, your hidden side was once more drinking in the wisdom of Time, remembering what it had learned before, and as it says in the Bible, the seed was growing and sprouting, although you knew not how. Then came the moment to start to learn new things. That is called Initiation, because that is where you will truly start to learn the things you need to learn in this life. The Voice indicates that you are ready.
"In the Tradition of the witches, an Initiation always takes place at the time of the Equinox, on the two days of the year when the days and the nights are equal in length. The next one is the Spring Equinox, on the twenty-first of March. I would like that to be the date of your Initiation because I, too, was initiated at the Spring Equinox. You know how to use the ritual instruments and you know all the rituals that keep open the bridge between the visible and the invisible. Whenever you perform one of those rituals, your soul recalls the lessons it learned in past lives.
"When you heard the Voice, you brought into the visible world something that was happening in the invisible world. In other words, you realized that your soul was ready for the next step. You have achieved your first major objective."
It occurred to Brida that her original desire had been to see the point of light that would indicate her Soul Mate, but she had been thinking a lot lately about the search for love, and that first desire was now dwindling in importance with each week that passed.
"There is just one test you must pass before you can be accepted for the Spring Initiation. If you fail, don't worry, you have many Equinoxes ahead of you, and one day you will be initiated. Up until now, you have dealt only with your masculine side: knowledge. You know certain things and are capable of understanding what you know, but you haven't yet touched on the one great feminine force, one of the great transformational powers. And knowledge without transformation is not wisdom.
"This force has always been an accursed Power among witches in general and women in particular. It is a force known to everyone on this planet. We women know that we are the great guardians of its secrets. Because of this force we are doomed to wander a dangerous, hostile world, because we were the ones who awoke it and because there have been places where it was considered an abomination. Anyone who comes into contact with this force, however unknowingly, is bound to it for the rest of their life. It can be your master or your slave; you can transform it into a magical force or use it all your life without ever realizing its immense power. This force is in everything around us, it's in the visible world of ordinary people, and in the invisible world of the mystics. It can be killed, crushed, hidden, even denied. It can lie dormant for years, forgotten in a corner somewhere; we can treat it in whichever way we want, but once someone has experienced this force, he or she will never be able to forget it."
"What force is that?"
"Don't keep asking stupid questions," retorted Wicca. "You know perfectly well what that force is."
Yes, Brida knew.
Sex.
Wicca drew aside one of the immaculately white curtains and showed Brida the view. The window looked out on the river, on old buildings, on distant hills. The Magus lived somewhere over there.
"What's that?" asked Wicca, pointing at the top of a church steeple.
"A cross. The symbol of Christianity."
"A Roman would never enter a building with a cross on it. He would think it was a house of torture, because the cross represents one of the cruellest instruments of torture ever invented by man. The cross might not have changed, but its meaning certainly has. In the same way, when mankind was closer to God, sex was the symbolic means of communion with the divine, a reencounter with the meaning of life."
"Why do people seeking God so often distance themselves from sex?"
Wicca was irritated by the interruption, but she answered anyway.
"When I talk about the force, I'm not talking only about the sexual
act. Some people make use of this force without actually having sex. Everything depends on which path you take."
"I know that force," Brida said. "I know how to make use of it."
"You may know about having sex with someone in bed, but that isn't the same as knowing it as a force. Both men and women are extremely vulnerable to the force of sex, because, during sex, pleasure and fear are present in equal measure."
"Why do pleasure and fear go together?"
She had finally asked a question worth answering.
"Because anyone who comes into contact with sex knows that they're dealing with something which only happens in all its intensity when they lose control. When we're in bed with someone, we're giving permission to that person to commune not only with our body but also with our whole being. The pure forces of life are in communication with each other, independent of us, and then we cannot hide who we are.
"It doesn't matter what image we have of ourselves. It doesn't matter what disguises we put on, what smart answers or honorable excuses we give. During sex, it's very difficult to deceive the other person, because that is when each person shows who they really are."
Wicca was speaking like someone who knew this force well. Her eyes were shining, and there was pride in her voice. Perhaps that was what lay behind her continuing attractiveness. Brida was glad Wicca was her teacher, and one day she would discover the secret of that charm.
"Before the Initiation can take place, you have to experience that force. Everything else belongs to the Great Mysteries, and you will learn about that after the ceremony."
"How do I go about experiencing it, then?"
"It's a simple enough formula, and like all simple things, its results are far more complex than all the complicated rituals I've taught you so far."
Wicca came over to Brida, grasped her shoulders, and looked into her eyes.
"This is the formula: use your five senses at all times. If they all come together at the moment of orgasm, you will be accepted for Initiation."
I came to apologize," Brida said.
They were in the same place where they had met before, near the rocks on the right-hand side of the mountain, from where you could see the valley below.
"Sometimes I think one thing and do another," she went on. "But if you've ever felt love, you'll know how painful it is to suffer for love."
"Yes, I know," replied the Magus. It was the first time he had made any comment on his private life.
"You were right about the point of light. It's not really that important. Now I've discovered that the search can be as interesting as actually finding what you're looking for."
"As long as you can overcome your fear."
"That's true."
And Brida was pleased to know that even he, with all his knowledge, still felt fear.
They spent the afternoon walking through the snow-covered forest. They talked about plants, about the landscape, and about the ways in which the spiders in that region wove their webs. At one point, they met a shepherd leading his sheep back home.
"Hello, Santiago!" cried the Magus. Then he turned to her:
"God has a special fondness for shepherds. They are people accustomed to nature, silence, patience. They possess all the necessary virtues to commune with the Universe."
Up until then, they hadn't discussed such matters at all, and Brida didn't want to anticipate the moment. She brought the conversation back to her life and to what was going on in the world. Her sixth sense told her to avoid mentioning Lorens. She didn't know what was going on, nor did she know why the Magus was being so attentive, but she needed to keep that flame alight. An accursed power, Wicca had called it. She had an objective, and this was her one means of attaining it.
They passed a few sheep, whose feet left strange prints in the snow. This time there was no shepherd, but the sheep seemed to know where to go and what they were looking for. The Magus stood for a long time watching the sheep, as if he were studying some great secret from the Tradition of the Sun, one that Brida could not understand.
As the light began to fade, so did the feeling of terror and respect that always gripped her when she was with him. For the first time, she felt calm and confident by his side, perhaps because she didn't need to demonstrate her gifts. She had heard the Voice, and her entry into the world of those other men and women was now simply a matter of time. She, too, belonged to the path of mysteries, and from the moment that she heard the Voice, the man beside her had become part of her Universe.
She felt like grasping his hands and asking him to show her some aspect of the Tradition of the Sun, just as she used to ask Lorens to talk to her about the ancient stars. It was a way of saying that they were seeing the same thing, albeit from different angles.
Something was telling her that he needed this, and it wasn't the mysterious Voice of the Tradition of the Moon, but the restless, sometimes foolish voice of her heart. A voice she didn't often listen to, since it always led her along paths she couldn't understand.
But emotions were, indeed, wild horses, and they demanded to be heard. Brida let them run free for a while until they grew tired. Her emotions were telling her how good it would be that afternoon if she were in love with him, because when you were in love, you were capable of learning everything and of knowing things you had never dared even to think, because love was the key to understanding all of the mysteries.
She ran through various amorous scenarios involving the Magus before she finally regained control. Then she said to herself that she could never love a man like him, because he understood the Universe, and all human feelings look small when viewed from a distance.
They reached the ruins of an old monastic church. The Magus sat down on one of the many piles of carved stone scattered on the ground, and Brida cleared the snow off a broad windowsill.
"It must be good to live here, spend all day in the forest, and then go home to sleep in a nice warm house," she said.
"Yes, it is good. I know the songs of all the different birds and I can read God's signs. I've learned the Traditions of the Sun and the Moon."
"But I'm alone," he felt like adding. "And there's no point in understanding the entire Universe if you're alone."
There, perched on the windowsill, was his Other Half. He could see the point of light above her left shoulder, and he regretted ever having learned the two Traditions, because had it not been for the point of light he might not have fallen in love with her.
"She's intelligent. She sensed the danger early, and now wants to know nothing more about points of light," he thought.
"I heard the Voice. Wicca really is an excellent teacher."
It was the first time that afternoon that she'd brought up the subject of magic.
"The Voice will teach you the mysteries of the world, the mysteries that are imprisoned in time, and which are carried from generation to generation by witches."
He spoke without really listening to what he was saying. He was trying to remember when he had first met his Soul Mate. Solitary people lose track of time, the hours are long and the days interminable. Even so, he knew they had only been together twice before. Brida was learning very fast.
"I know the rituals and I'm to be initiated into the Great Mysteries at the Spring Equinox."
She was beginning to feel tense again.
"There's one thing, though, that I still haven't experienced--the force that everyone knows and which they revere as if it were a mystery."
The Magus understood why she had come that afternoon. It wasn't just to walk among the trees and leave two sets of footprints in the snow, footprints that were getting closer every minute.
Brida turned up her jacket collar to protect her face, whether because the cold grew more intense when they stopped walking or because she was merely trying to conceal her nervousness, she wasn't sure.
"I want to learn how to awaken the force of sex through the five senses," she said at last. "Wicca won't talk about it. She says that I'll
discover it just as I discovered the Voice."
They sat for a few minutes in silence. She wondered if she should even be talking about such a thing in the ruins of a church. But then she remembered that there are many ways of using the force. The monks who had lived there had worked through abstinence, and they would understand what she meant.
"I've tried all kinds of things. I think there must be a trick, like the trick with the phone to get me to really see the tarot cards. I think it's something Wicca doesn't want to teach me. I think she must have found it very hard to learn and wants me to experience the same difficulties."
"Was that why you came looking for me?"
Brida looked deep into his eyes.
"Yes."
She hoped her answer would convince him, but she wasn't sure of anything anymore. The walk through the snowy wood, the sunlight on the snow, the easy conversation about the ordinary things of the world, all of this had set her emotions galloping like wild horses. She had to persuade herself again that she was there for only one reason, and that she would attain her objective by whatever means possible. Because God had been a woman before he became a man.
The Magus got up from the pile of stones he was sitting on and walked over to the only wall that had not crumbled into rubble. In the middle of the wall was a door, and he stood leaning against it. The evening sun lit him from behind, and Brida could not see his face.
"There's one thing that Wicca didn't teach you," he said. "She may have forgotten to do so, or she may have wanted you to discover it alone."
"Well, here I am, alone."
And she asked herself if perhaps this had been her Teacher's plan all along, to bring her together with this man.
"I'm going to teach you," he said at last. "Come with me."
They walked to a place where the trees were taller and their trunks thicker. Brida noticed that some of them had rough-and-ready ladders attached to the trunks. At the top of each ladder was a kind of cabin.
"This must be where the hermits of the Tradition of the Sun live," she thought.
