Brida Read online

  “May the Virgin Mary remind us always that while men were tried in the public square over land disputes, women were tried in the public square for adultery.

  “May the Virgin Mary remind us always of our ancestors, who—like St. Joan of Arc—had to disguise themselves as men in order to fulfill the Lord’s word, and yet still they died in the fire.”

  Wicca held the wooden spoon in both hands and stretched out both arms.

  “Here is the symbol of our ancestors’ martyrdom. May the flame that devoured their bodies remain always alight in our souls. Because they are in us. Because we are them.”

  And she threw the spoon into the fire.

  Brida continued to perform the rituals that Wicca had taught her. She kept the candle always burning and danced to the sound of the world. She noted down her meetings with Wicca in the Book of Shadows and went to the sacred wood twice a week. She noticed, to her surprise, that she was beginning to understand more about herbs and plants.

  However, the voices that Wicca wanted to awaken did not appear. Nor did she manage to see the point of light above anyone’s left shoulder.

  “Who knows, perhaps I haven’t yet met my Soul Mate,” she thought rather fearfully. This was the fate of those who knew the Tradition of the Moon: never to make a mistake when choosing the man in their life. This meant that, from the moment they became a true witch, they would never again nurse the same illusions about love that other people did. True, this would mean less suffering or even no suffering at all, because they could love everything more intensely; finding one’s Soul Mate was, after all, a divine mission in everyone’s life. Even if, one day, you were forced to part, love for your Soul Mate—according to both Traditions—would always be crowned with glory, understanding, and a kind of purifying nostalgia.

  It meant, too, that, from the moment you became able to see the point of light, there would be no Dark Night of Love. Brida thought of the many times she had suffered for love, the nights she had lain awake waiting for a phone call that never came, the romantic weekends that didn’t survive the following week, the parties spent glancing anxiously around to see who was there, the joy of making a conquest simply to prove that you could, the sadness and loneliness when you were sure that your best friend’s boyfriend was the only man who could possibly make you happy. That was part of her world, and the world of everyone else she knew. That was love, and that was how people had searched for their Soul Mate since time began, by looking into another person’s eyes in search of that special light, desire. She had never given much value to such things; on the contrary, she had always thought it pointless to suffer because of someone else, or to feel scared stiff because you couldn’t find anyone with whom to share your life. Now, however, that she had the chance to free herself from such fears forever, she wasn’t sure she wanted to.

  “Do I really want to be able to see that point of light?”

  She thought of the Magus—she was beginning to think he was right and that the Tradition of the Sun was the only way to deal with Love. But she couldn’t change her mind now; she knew the path to follow, and she must follow it to the end. She knew that if she gave up now, she would find it harder and harder to make any choices in life.

  One afternoon, after a long lesson devoted to rain-making rituals performed by the witches of old—rituals that Brida would have to note down in her Book of Shadows even though she would probably never use them—Wicca asked if she wore all the clothes she owned.

  “No, of course I don’t,” came the reply.

  “Well, from now on, wear everything in your wardrobe.”

  Brida thought perhaps she had misunderstood.

  “Everything that contains our energy should be in constant movement,” Wicca explained. “The clothes you bought are part of you, and they represent those special times when you left the house wanting to splash out a little because you were happy with the world, times when you’d been hurt and wanted to make yourself feel better or times when you thought you should change your life.

  “Clothes always transform emotion into matter. It’s one of the bridges between the visible and the invisible. Some clothes can even be harmful because they were made for someone else but have ended up in your hands.”

  Brida knew what she meant. There were some clothes she couldn’t bring herself to wear, because whenever she did, something bad happened.

  “Get rid of any clothes that were not intended for you,” Wicca went on. “And wear all the others. It’s important to keep the soil turned, the waves crashing, and all your emotions in movement. The whole Universe is moving all the time, and we must do likewise.”

  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 p
eople 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.