Witch of Portobello Read online

  ANTOINE LOCADOUR, HISTORIAN

  Heron started spending a fortune on phone calls to France, asking me to get all the information I could by the weekend, and he kept going on about the navel, which seemed to me the least interesting and least romantic thing in the world. But, then, the English don’t see things in the same way as the French, and so, instead of asking questions, I tried to find out what science had to say on the subject.

  I soon realized that historical knowledge wasn’t enough. I could locate a monument here, a dolmen there, but the odd thing was that the ancient cultures all seemed to agree on the subject and even use the same word to define the places they considered sacred. I’d never noticed this before and I started to get interested. When I saw the number of coincidences, I went in search of something that would complement them—human behavior and beliefs.

  I immediately had to reject the first and most logical explanation, that we’re nourished through the umbilical cord, which is why the navel is, for us, the center of life. A psychologist immediately pointed out that the theory made no sense at all: man’s central idea is always to “cut” the umbilical cord and, from then on, the brain or the heart become the more important symbols.

  When we’re interested in something, everything around us appears to refer to it (the mystics call these phenonema “signs,” the sceptics “coincidence,” and psychologists “concentrated focus,” although I’ve yet to find out what term historians should use). One night, my adolescent daughter came home with a navel piercing.

  “Why did you do that?”

  “Because I felt like it.”

  A perfectly natural and honest explanation, even for a historian who needs to find a reason for everything. When I went into her room, I saw a poster of her favorite female pop star. She had a bare midriff, and in that photo on the wall, her navel did look like the center of the world.

  I phoned Heron and asked why he was so interested. For the first time, he told me about what had happened at the theater and how the people there had all responded to a command in the same spontaneous, unexpected manner. It was impossible to get any more information out of my daughter, and so I decided to consult some specialists.

  No one seemed very interested until I found François Shepka, an Indian psychologist [Editor’s note: the scientist requested that his name and nationality be changed], who was starting to revolutionize the therapies currently in use. According to him, the idea that traumas could be resolved by a return to childhood had never got anyone anywhere. Many problems that had been overcome in adult life resurfaced, and grown-ups started blaming their parents for failures and defeats. Shepka was at war with the various French psychoanalytic associations, and a conversation about absurd subjects, like the navel, seemed to relax him.

  He warmed to the theme but didn’t, at first, tackle it directly. He said that according to one of the most respected psychoanalysts in history, the Swiss analyst Carl Gustav Jung, we all drank from the same spring. It’s called the “soul of the world.” However much we try to be independent individuals, a part of our memory is the same. We all seek the ideal of beauty, dance, divinity, and music.

  Society, meanwhile, tries to define how these ideals should be manifested in reality. Currently, for example, the ideal of beauty is to be thin, and yet thousands of years ago all the images of goddesses were fat. It’s the same with happiness: there are a series of rules, and if you fail to follow them, your conscious mind will refuse to accept the idea that you’re happy.

  Jung used to divide individual progress into four stages. The first was the Persona—the mask we use every day, pretending to be who we are. We believe that the world depends on us, that we’re wonderful parents and that our children don’t understand us, that our bosses are unfair, that the dream of every human being is never to work and to travel constantly. Many people realize that there’s something wrong with this story, but because they don’t want to change anything, they quickly drive the thought from their head. A few do try to understand what is wrong and end up finding the Shadow.

  The Shadow is our dark side, which dictates how we should act and behave. When we try to free ourselves from the Persona, we turn on a light inside us and we see the cobwebs, the cowardice, the meanness. The Shadow is there to stop our progress, and it usually succeeds, and we run back to what we were before we doubted. However, some do survive this encounter with their own cobwebs, saying: “Yes, I have a few faults, but I’m good enough, and I want to go forward.”

  At this moment, the Shadow disappears and we come into contact with the Soul.

  By Soul, Jung didn’t mean “soul” in the religious sense; he speaks of a return to the Soul of the World, the source of all knowledge. Instincts become sharper, emotions more radical, the interpretation of signs becomes more important than logic, perceptions of reality grow less rigid. We start to struggle with things to which we are unaccustomed and we start to react in ways that we ourselves find unexpected.

  And we discover that if we can channel that continuous flow of energy, we can organize it around a very solid center, what Jung calls the Wise Old Man for men and the Great Mother for women.

  Allowing this to manifest itself is dangerous. Generally speaking, anyone who reaches this stage has a tendency to consider themselves a saint, a tamer of spirits, a prophet. A great deal of maturity is required if someone is to come into contact with the energy of the Wise Old Man or the Great Mother.

  “Jung went mad,” said my friend, when he had explained the four stages described by the Swiss psychoanalyst. “When he got in touch with his Wise Old Man, he started saying that he was guided by a spirit called Philemon.”

  “And finally…”

  “…we come to the symbol of the navel. Not only people, but societies too fit these four stages. Western civilization has a Persona, the ideas that guide us. In its attempt to adapt to changes, it comes into contact with the Shadow, and we see mass demonstrations, in which the collective energy can be manipulated both for good and ill. Suddenly, for some reason, the Persona or the Shadow are no longer enough for human beings, and then comes the moment to make the leap, the unconscious connection with the Soul. New values begin to emerge.”

  “I’ve noticed that. I’ve noticed a resurgence in the cult of the female face of God.”

  “An excellent example. And at the end of this process, if those new values are to become established, the entire race comes into contact with the symbols, the coded language by which present-day generations communicate with their ancestral knowledge. One of those symbols of rebirth is the navel. In the navel of Vishnu, the Indian divinity responsible for creation and destruction, sits the god who will rule each cycle. Yogis consider the navel one of the chakras, one of the sacred points on the human body. Primitive tribes often used to build monuments in the place that they believed to be the navel of the world. In South America, people who go into trances say that the true form of the human being is a luminous egg that connects with other people through filaments that emerge from the navel. The mandala, a design said to stimulate meditation, is a symbolic representation of this.”

  I passed all this information on to Heron in England before the agreed date. I told him that the woman who had succeeded in provoking the same absurd reaction in a group of people must have enormous power, and that I wouldn’t be surprised if she wasn’t some kind of paranormal. I suggested that he study her more closely.

  I had never thought about the subject before, and I tried to forget it at once. However, my daughter said that I was behaving oddly, thinking only of myself, that I was, in short, navel gazing!

  DEIDRE O’NEILL, KNOWN AS EDDA

  “It was a complete disaster. How could you have put the idea in my head that I could teach? Why humiliate me in front of other people? I should just forget you even exist. When I was taught to dance, I danced. When I was taught calligraphy, I practiced calligraphy. But demanding that I go so far beyond my limits was pure wickedness. That’s why I caught
the train up to Scotland, that’s why I came here, so that you could see how much I hate you!”

  She couldn’t stop crying. Fortunately, she’d left the child with her parents, because she was talking rather too loudly and there was a faint whiff of wine on her breath. I asked her to come in. Making all that noise at my front door would do nothing to help my already somewhat tarnished reputation, with people putting it around that I received visits from both men and women and organized sex orgies in the name of Satan.

  But she still stood there, shouting, “It’s all your fault! You humiliated me!”

  One window opened, and then another. Well, anyone working to change the axis of the world must be prepared for the fact that her neighbors won’t always be happy. I went over to Athena and did exactly what she wanted me to do: I put my arms around her.

  She continued weeping, her head resting on my shoulder. Very gently I helped her up the steps and into the house. I made some tea, the recipe for which I share with no one because it was taught to me by my protector. I placed it in front of her and she drank it down in one gulp. By doing so, she demonstrated that her trust in me was still intact.

  “Why am I like this?” she asked.

  I knew then that the effects of the alcohol had been neutralized.

  “There are men who love me. I have a son who adores me and sees me as his model in life. I have adoptive parents whom I consider to be my real family and who would lay down their lives for me. I filled in all the blank spaces in my past when I went in search of my birth mother. I have enough money to spend the next three years doing nothing but enjoying life, and still I’m not content!

  “I feel miserable and guilty because God blessed me with tragedies that I’ve managed to overcome and with miracles to which I’ve done credit, but I’m never content. I always want more. The last thing I needed was to go to that theater and add a failure to my list of victories!”

  “Do you think you did the wrong thing?”

  She looked at me in surprise.

  “Why do you ask that?”

  I said nothing but awaited her answer.

  “No, I did the right thing. I went there with a journalist friend, and I didn’t have a clue what I was going to do, but suddenly things started to emerge as if out of the void. I felt the presence of the Great Mother by my side, guiding me, instructing me, filling my voice with a confidence I didn’t really feel.”

  “So why are you complaining?”

  “Because no one understood!”

  “Is that important? Important enough to make you travel up to Scotland and insult me in front of everyone?”

  “Of course it’s important! If I can do absolutely anything and know I’m doing the right thing, how come I’m not at least loved and admired?”

  So that was the problem. I took her hand and led her into the same room where, weeks before, she had sat contemplating a candle. I asked her to sit down and try to calm herself a little, although I was sure the tea was already taking effect. I went to my room, picked up a round mirror, and placed it before her.

  “You have everything and you’ve fought for every inch of your territory. Now look at your tears. Look at your face and the bitterness etched on it. Look at the woman in the mirror, but don’t laugh this time, try to understand her.”

  I allowed her time to follow my instructions. When I saw that she was, as I intended, going into a trance, I went on.

  “What is the secret of life? We call it ‘grace’ or ‘blessing.’ Everyone struggles to be satisfied with what they have. Apart from me. Apart from you. Apart from a few people who will, alas, have to make a small sacrifice in the name of something greater.

  “Our imagination is larger than the world around us; we go beyond our limits. This used to be called ‘witchcraft,’ but fortunately things have changed, otherwise we would both already have been burned at the stake. When they stopped burning women, science found an explanation for our behavior, normally referred to as ‘female hysteria.’ We don’t get burned anymore, but it does cause problems, especially in the workplace. But don’t worry, eventually they’ll call it ‘wisdom.’ Keep looking into the mirror. Who can you see?”

  “A woman.”

  “And what is there beyond that woman?”

  She hesitated. I asked again and she said, “Another woman, more authentic and more intelligent than me. It’s as if she were a soul that didn’t belong to me, but which is nonetheless part of me.”

  “Exactly. Now I’m going to ask you to imagine one of the most important symbols in alchemy: a snake forming a circle and swallowing its own tail. Can you imagine that?”

  She nodded.

  “That’s what life is like for people like you and me. We’re constantly destroying and rebuilding ourselves. Everything in your life has followed the same pattern: from lost to found; from divorce to new love; from working in a bank to selling real estate in the desert. Only one thing remains intact—your son. He is the connecting thread, and you must respect that.”

  She started to cry again, but her tears were different this time.

  “You came here because you saw a female face in the flames. That face is the face you can see now in the mirror, so try to honor it. Don’t let yourself be weighed down by what other people think, because in a few years, in a few decades, or in a few centuries, that way of thinking will have changed. Live now what others will only live in the future.

  “What do you want? You can’t want to be happy, because that’s too easy and too boring. You can’t want only to love, because that’s impossible. What do you want? You want to justify your life, to live it as intensely as possible. That is at once a trap and a source of ecstasy. Try to be alert to that danger and experience the joy and the adventure of being that woman who is beyond the image reflected in the mirror.”

  Her eyes closed, but I knew that my words had penetrated her soul and would stay there.

  “If you want to take a risk and continue teaching, do so. If you don’t want to, know that you’ve already gone further than most other people.”

  Her body began to relax. I held her in my arms until she fell asleep, her head on my breast.

  I tried to whisper a few more things to her, because I’d been through the same stages, and I knew how difficult it was—just as my protector had told me it would be and as I myself had found out through painful experience. However, the fact that it was difficult didn’t make the experience any less interesting.

  What experience? Living as a human being and as a divinity. Moving from tension into relaxation. From relaxation into trance. From trance into a more intense contact with other people. From that contact back into tension and so on, like the serpent swallowing its own tail.

  It was no easy matter, mainly because it requires unconditional love, which does not fear suffering, rejection, loss.

  Whoever drinks this water once can never quench her thirst at other springs.

  ANDREA MC CAIN, ACTRESS

  “The other day you mentioned Gaia, who created herself and had a child without the help of a man. You said, quite rightly, that the Great Mother was eventually superseded by the male gods. But you forgot about Hera, a descendant of your favorite goddess. Hera is more important because she’s more practical. She rules the skies and the earth, the seasons of the year and storms. According to the same Greeks you cited, the Milky Way that we see in the sky was created out of the milk that spurted forth from her breast. A beautiful breast, it must be said, because all-powerful Zeus changed himself into a bird purely in order to be able to have his way with her without being rejected.”

  We were walking through a large department store in Knightsbridge. I’d phoned her, saying that I’d like to talk, and she’d invited me to the winter sales. It would have been far more pleasant to have a cup of tea together or lunch in some quiet restaurant.

  “Your son could get lost in this crowd.”

  “Don’t worry about him. Go on with what you were telling me.”

&nb
sp; “Hera discovered the trick and forced Zeus to marry her. Immediately after the ceremony, however, the great king of Olympus returned to his playboy lifestyle, seducing any woman, mortal or immortal, who happened by. Hera, however, remained faithful. Rather than blame her husband, she blamed the women for their loose behavior.”

  “Isn’t that what we all do?”

  I didn’t know what she meant, and so I carried on talking as if I hadn’t heard what she’d said.

  “Then she decided to give him a taste of his own medicine and find a god or a man to take to her bed. Look, couldn’t we stop for a while and have a coffee?”

  But Athena had just gone into a lingerie shop.

  “Do you think this is pretty?” she asked, holding up a provocative flesh-colored bra and panty set.

  “Yes, very. Will anyone see it if you wear it?”

  “Of course, or do you think I’m a saint? But go on with what you were saying about Hera.”

  “Zeus was horrified by her behavior, but Hera was leading an independent life and didn’t give two hoots about her marriage. Have you really got a boyfriend?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’ve never seen him.”

  She went over to the checkout, paid for the lingerie, and put it in her bag.

  “Viorel’s hungry, and I’m sure he’s not the slightest bit interested in Greek myths, so hurry up and finish Hera’s story.”

  “It has a rather silly ending. Zeus, afraid of losing his beloved, pretended that he was getting married again. When Hera found out, she saw that things had gone too far. Lovers were one thing, but divorce was unthinkable.”

  “Nothing new there, then.”

  “She decided to go to the ceremony and kick up a fuss, and it was only then that she realized Zeus was marrying a statue.”

  “What did Hera do?”

  “She roared with laughter. That broke the ice between them, and she became once more the queen of the skies.”