She felt proud of her pupils, male and female, who had proved capable of sacrificing the comfort of a world of nice, neat explanations for the challenge of discovering a new world.
She looked again at the three naked women lying on the ground, arms outstretched, and tried to clothe them again in the color of the aura they emanated. They were now traveling through Time and meeting many lost Soul Mates. Those three women would, from that night on, plunge into the mission that had been awaiting them since they were born. One was over sixty, but age was of no importance. What mattered was that they were finally face-to-face with the destiny that had been patiently awaiting them, and from now on they would use their Gifts to keep safe certain crucial plants in God's garden. Each one had arrived at this place for different reasons--a failed love affair, a sense of weariness with routine, or perhaps a search for Power. They had confronted fear, inertia, and the many disappointments that assail those who follow the path of magic. But the fact is, they had reached the place they needed to reach, for the Hand of God always guides those who follow their path with faith.
"The Tradition of the Moon is a fascinating one, with its Teachers and its rituals, but there is another Tradition, too," thought the Magus, his eyes still fixed on Brida, and feeling slightly envious of Wicca, who would remain by her side for a long time. That other Tradition was a more difficult one to follow because it was simple, and simple things always seem so complicated. Its Teachers lived in the world and did not always realize the importance of what they were teaching, because the impulse behind that teaching often seemed nothing more than an absurd impulse. They were carpenters, poets, mathematicians, people from all professions and walks of life, who lived scattered throughout the world. People who suddenly felt the need to talk to someone, to explain a feeling they couldn't quite understand, but which was impossible to keep to themselves, and that was the way in which the Tradition of the Sun kept its knowledge alive. The impulse of Creation.
Wherever there were people, there was always some trace of the Tradition of the Sun. Sometimes it was a sculpture, sometimes a table, at others a few lines from a poem passed from generation to generation by a particular group or tribe. The people through which the Tradition of the Sun spoke were people just like anyone else, and who, one morning or one evening, looked at the world and felt the presence of something greater. They had unwittingly plunged into an unknown sea, and, for the most part, they did not do so again. Everyone, at least once in each incarnation, possessed the secret of the Universe.
They found themselves momentarily immersed in the Dark Night, but, lacking sufficient self-belief, they rarely returned to it. And the Sacred Heart, which nourished the world with love and peace and devotion, found itself once more surrounded by thorns.
Wicca was glad she was a Teacher of the Tradition of the Moon. Everyone who came to her was eager to learn, while, in the Tradition of the Sun, most were in permanent flight from what life was teaching them.
"Not that it matters," thought Wicca, because the age of miracles was returning, and no one could remain indifferent to the changes the world was beginning to experience. Within a few years, the power of the Tradition of the Sun would reveal itself in all its brilliance. Anyone not already following their own path would begin to feel dissatisfied with themselves and be forced to make a choice: they would either have to accept an existence beset with disappointment and pain or else come to realize that everyone was born to be happy. Having made their choice, they would have no option but to change, and the great struggle, the Jihad, would begin.
With one perfect movement of her hand, Wicca drew a circle in the air with her dagger. Inside that invisible circle, she drew a five-pointed star, which witches call the pentagram. The pentagram was the symbol of the elements at work in mankind, and through it, the women lying on the ground would now come into contact with the world of light.
"Close your eyes," said Wicca.
The three women obeyed.
Above the head of each of them Wicca performed the ritual moves with her dagger.
"Now open the eyes of your souls."
Brida opened the eyes of her soul. She was in a desert, and the place looked very familiar.
She remembered that she had been there before. With the Magus.
She looked around but couldn't see him. Yet she wasn't afraid; she felt calm and happy. She knew who she was and where she lived; she knew that in some other place in time a party was going on. But none of this mattered, because the landscape before her was so much prettier: the sand, the mountains in the distance, and a huge stone.
"Welcome," said a voice.
Beside her stood a gentleman wearing clothes like those worn by her grandfather.
"I am Wicca's Teacher. When you become a Teacher, your students will find Wicca here, and so on and so forth until the Soul of the World finally makes itself manifest."
"I'm at a ritual for witches," Brida said, "a Sabbath."
The Teacher laughed.
"You have found your path. Few people have the courage to do so. They prefer to follow a path that is not their own. Everyone has a Gift, but they choose not to see it. You accepted yours, and your encounter with your Gift is your encounter with the world."
"But why?"
"So that you can plant God's garden."
"I have a life ahead of me," said Brida. "I want to live that life just like anyone else. I want to be able to make mistakes, to be selfish, to have faults."
The Teacher smiled. In his right hand a blue cloak suddenly appeared.
"You can only be close to people if you are one of them."
The scene around her changed. She was no longer in a desert but immersed in a kind of liquid, in which various strange creatures were swimming.
"Life is about making mistakes," said the Teacher. "Cells went on reproducing themselves in exactly the same way for millions of years until one of them made a mistake, and introduced change into that endless cycle of repetition."
Brida was gazing in amazement at the sea. She didn't ask how it was possible for them to breathe in there; all she could hear was the Teacher's voice, all she could think of was a very similar journey she had made and which had begun in a field of wheat.
"It was a mistake that set the world in motion," said the Teacher. "Never be afraid of making a mistake."
"But Adam and Eve were driven out of Paradise."
"And they will return one day, knowing the miracle of the heavens and of all the world. God knew what He was doing when He drew their attention to the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. If He hadn't wanted them to eat it, He would never have mentioned it."
"So why did He, then?"
"In order to set the Universe in motion."
The scene changed back to the desert and the stone. It was morning, and the horizon was becoming suffused with pink light. The Teacher came toward her with the cloak.
"I consecrate you now, in this moment. Your Gift is God's instrument. May you prove to be a useful tool."
Wicca picked up the dress belonging to the youngest of the three women and held it up in her two hands. She made a symbolic offering to the Celtic priests who, in astral form, were watching everything from above the trees. Then she turned to the young woman.
"Stand up," she said.
Brida stood up. The shadows from the fire flickered over her naked body. Once, another body had been consumed by those same flames, but that time was over.
"Raise your arms."
Brida raised her arms. Wicca put the dress on her.
"I was naked," she said to the Teacher when he had wrapped the cloak about her. "And I was not ashamed."
"If it wasn't for shame, God would never have discovered that Adam and Eve had eaten the apple."
The Teacher was watching the sunrise. He seemed distracted, but he wasn't. Brida knew this.
"Never be ashamed," he said. "Accept what life offers you and try to drink from every cup. All wines should be tasted; some should on
ly be sipped, but with others, drink the whole bottle."
"How will I know which is which?"
"By the taste. You can only know a good wine if you have first tasted a bad one."
Wicca turned Brida around to face the fire, then moved on to the next Initiate. The fire picked up the energy of her Gift so that it could be made manifest in her. At that moment, Brida was watching a sunrise, a sun that would, from then on, light the rest of her life.
"Now you must go," said the Teacher as soon as the sun had risen.
"I'm not afraid of my Gift," Brida told him. "I know where I'm going and what I'm going to do. I know that someone helped me to arrive here.
"I've been here before. There were people dancing and a secret temple built to celebrate the Tradition of the Moon."
The Teacher said nothing. He turned to her and made a sign with his right hand.
"You have been accepted. May your path be one of peace in times of peace, and of combat in times of combat. Never confuse one with the other."
The figure of the Teacher began to dissolve, along with the desert and the stone. Only the sun remained, but the sun began to become one with the sky. Then the sky grew dark, and the sun became more like the flames of a fire.
She was back. She remembered everything now: the noise, the clapping, the dancing, the trance. She remembered having taken off her clothes in front of all these people, and now she felt rather awkward. But she also remembered her meeting with the Teacher. She tried to master her feelings of shame and fear and anxiety--they would always be with her, and she must get used to them.
Wicca asked the three Initiates to stand in the very middle of the semicircle formed by the women. The witches joined hands and made a ring.
They sang songs that no one now dared to accompany; the sounds flowed from their barely open lips, creating a strange vibration, which grew ever shriller until it resembled the cry of some crazed bird. At some point in the future, she would learn how to make those sounds. She would learn many more things, until she became a Teacher, too. Then other men and women would be initiated by her into the Tradition of the Moon.
All of this, however, would happen at the appointed moment. She had all the time in the world, now that she had found her destiny again, and had someone to help her. Eternity was hers.
Everyone appeared to have strange colors around them, and Brida felt slightly bewildered. She liked the world as it had been before.
The witches stopped singing.
"The Initiation of the Moon is finished and complete," said Wicca. "The world is now a field, and you will work to make sure that there is a good harvest."
"I feel strange," said one of the Initiates. "Everything's blurred."
"What you're seeing is the energy field that surrounds each individual, their aura, as we call it. That is the first step along the path of the Great Mysteries. The sensation will soon fade, and later I will teach you how to awaken it again."
With one swift, agile movement, she flung her ritual dagger to the ground. It stuck fast, the handle still trembling with the force of the impact.
"The ceremony is over," she said.
Brida went over to Lorens. His eyes were shining, and she felt how very proud he was of her and how much he loved her. They could grow together, create a new way of living, discover a whole Universe that lay before them, just waiting for people of courage like them.
But there was another man, too. While she was talking to Wicca's Teacher, she had made her choice, because that other man would be able to take her hand during difficult moments, and lead her with experience and love through the Dark Night of Faith. She would learn to love him, and her love for him would be as great as her respect. They were both walking the same road to knowledge, and because of him she had reached the point where she was now. With him, she would one day learn the Tradition of the Sun.
Now she knew that she was a witch. She had learned the art of witchcraft over many centuries and was back where she should be. From that night on, Wisdom and knowledge would be the most important things in her life.
"We can leave now," she said to Lorens. He was gazing with admiration at this woman dressed all in black; Brida, however, knew that the Magus would be seeing her dressed all in blue.
She held out the bag containing her other clothes.
"You go ahead and see if you can get us a lift. I need to speak to someone."
Lorens took the bag but only went a little way toward the path through the forest. The ritual was over and they were back in the world of men, with their loves, their jealousies, and their wars of conquest.
Fear had come back, too. Brida was behaving oddly.
"I don't know if God exists," he said to the trees around him.
"And yet I can't think about that now, because I, too, am face-to-face with the mystery."
He felt he was talking in a different way, with a strange confidence he had never known he possessed. But, at that moment, he believed that the trees were listening to him.
"The people here may not understand me; they may despise my efforts, but I know that I'm as brave as they are, because I seek God even though I don't believe in Him. If He exists, He is the God of the Brave."
Lorens noticed that his hands were trembling slightly. The night had passed, and he had understood nothing of what went on. He knew that he had entered into a trance state, but that was all. However, the fact that his hands were shaking had nothing to do with that plunge into the Dark Night, as Brida called it.
He looked up at the sky, still full of low clouds. God was the God of the Brave. And He would understand him, because the brave are those who make decisions despite their fear, who are tormented by the Devil every step of the way and gripped by anxiety about their every action, wondering if they are right or wrong. And yet nevertheless, they act. They do so because they also believe in miracles, like the witches who had danced around the fire that night.
God might be trying to return to him through that woman who was now walking away toward another man. If she left, perhaps God would leave forever. She was his opportunity, because she knew that the best way to immerse oneself in God was through love. He didn't want to lose the chance of getting her back.
He took a deep breath, feeling the cold, pure air of the forest in his lungs, and he made a sacred promise to himself.
God was the God of the Brave.
Brida walked over to the Magus. They met by the fire. Words came only with difficulty.
She was the one to break the silence.
"We are on the same path."
He nodded.
"So let us follow it together."
"But you don't love me," said the Magus.
"I do love you. I don't yet know my love for you, but I do love you. You're my Soul Mate."
The Magus still had a distant look in his eye. He was thinking about the Tradition of the Sun, and how one of the most important lessons of the Tradition of the Sun was Love. Love was the only bridge between the visible and the invisible known to everyone. It was the only effective language for translating the lessons that the Universe taught to human beings every day.
"I'm not going anywhere," she said. "I'm staying with you."
"Your boyfriend is waiting," replied the Magus. "I will bless your love."
Brida looked at him, puzzled.
"No one can possess a sunset like the one we saw that evening," he went on. "Just as no one can possess an afternoon of rain beating against the window, or the serenity of a sleeping child, or the magical moment when the waves break on the rocks. No one can possess the beautiful things of this Earth, but we can know them and love them. It is through such moments that God reveals himself to mankind.
"We are not the masters of the sun or of the afternoon or of the waves or even of the vision of God, because we cannot possess ourselves."
The Magus held out his hand to Brida and gave her a flower.
"When we first met--although it seems to me that I've always known y
ou, because I can't remember the world before that--I showed you the Dark Night. I wanted to see how you would face up to your own limitations. I knew that you were my Soul Mate, and that you would teach me everything I needed to learn--that is why God divided man and woman."
Brida touched the flower. It seemed to her that it was the first flower she had seen in months. Spring had arrived.
"People give flowers as presents because flowers contain the true meaning of Love. Anyone who tries to possess a flower will have to watch its beauty fading. But if you simply look at a flower in a field, you will keep it forever, because the flower is part of the evening and the sunset and the smell of damp earth and the clouds on the horizon."
Brida was looking at the flower. The Magus took it from her and returned it to the forest.
Brida's eyes filled with tears. She was proud of her Soul Mate.
"That is what the forest taught me. That you will never be mine, and that is why I will never lose you. You were my hope during my days of loneliness, my anxiety during moments of doubt, my certainty during moments of faith.
"Knowing that my Soul Mate would come one day, I devoted myself to learning the Tradition of the Sun. Knowing that you existed was my one reason for continuing to live."
Brida could no longer conceal her tears.
"Then you came, and I understood all of this. You came to free me from the slavery I myself had created, to tell me that I was free to return to the world and to the things of the world. I understood everything I needed to know, and I love you more than all the women I have ever known, more than I loved the woman who, quite unwittingly, exiled me to the forest. I will always remember now that love is liberty. That was the lesson it took me so many years to learn. That is the lesson that sent me into exile and now sets me free again."
The flames crackled in the fire, and a few latecomers were beginning to say their good-byes. But Brida wasn't listening to anything that was going on around her.