“I must take risks,” she said to herself again.
The Magus lived a little way outside the village. Brida noticed that although his house was very different from Wicca’s, it was equally comfortable and just as tastefully decorated. However, there wasn’t a book in sight; it was mainly empty space and a few bits of furniture.
They went into the kitchen to make tea, then came back to the living room.
“Why did you come here today?” asked the Magus.
“I promised myself that I would, once I knew something.”
“And what do you know?”
“Well, I know a little. I know that the path is simple and therefore more difficult than I thought. But I will simplify my soul. Anyway, my first question is: ‘Why are you wasting your time with me?’”
“Because you’re my Soul Mate,” thought the Magus, but he said:
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“Because I need someone to talk to.”
“What do you think of the path I’ve chosen—the Tradition of the Moon?”
The Magus needed to tell the truth, even though he wished the truth was different.
“It was your path. Wicca is quite right. You are a witch. You will learn to use Time’s memory to discover the lessons that God taught.”
And he wondered why life was like this, why he had met his Soul Mate only to find that the one way she could learn was through the Tradition of the Moon.
“I only have one more question,” said Brida. It was getting late; soon there would be no more buses. “I need to know the answer, and I know that Wicca won’t teach it to me. I know this because she’s a woman like me. She’ll always be my Teacher, but on this topic, she’ll always be a woman. I want to know how to find my Soul Mate.”
“He’s right here with you,” thought the Magus, but again he said nothing. He went over to one corner of the room and turned out the lights. Only a kind of acrylic sculpture remained lit. Brida hadn’t noticed it when she came in. It contained some sort of liquid, and bubbles rose and fell inside it, filling the room with red and blue lights.
“We’ve met twice now,” said the Magus, his eyes fixed on the sculpture. “I only have permission to teach through the Tradition of the Sun. The Tradition of the Sun awakens in people the an-cestral knowledge that they possess.”
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“How do I find my Soul Mate through the Tradition of the Sun?”
“That’s what everyone here on Earth is searching for,” the Magus said, unwittingly echoing Wicca’s words. “Perhaps they’d been taught by the same Teacher,” Brida thought.
“And the Tradition of the Sun placed in the world, for everyone to see, the sign that someone is their Soul Mate: a particular light in the eye.”
“I’ve seen lots of different kinds of light in lots of people’s eyes,” Brida said. “Today, for example, I saw your eyes shining.
That’s what everyone looks for.”
“She’s forgotten her prayer,” thought the Magus. “She thinks she’s different from everyone else. She’s incapable of recognizing what God is generous enough to show her.”
“I don’t understand eyes,” she insisted. “Tell me instead how people discover their Soul Mate through the Tradition of the Moon.”
The Magus turned to her, his eyes cold and expressionless.
“You’re sad,” she said, “and you’re sad because I’m still incapable of learning through the simple things. What you don’t understand is that people suffer, they search and search for love, not knowing that they’re fulfilling the divine mission of finding their Soul Mate. You forget—because you’re a wise man and don’t think about what it’s like for ordinary people—that I carry millennia of disappointment within me, and I can no longer learn certain things through the simple things of life.”
The Magus remained impassive.
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“A point of light,” he said. “A point of light above the left shoulder of your Soul Mate. That is how it is in the Tradition of the Moon.”
“I have to leave,” she said, hoping that he would ask her to stay.
She liked being there. He had answered her question.
The Magus, however, got up and accompanied her to the door.
“I’m going to learn everything that you know,” she said. “I’m going to discover how to see that point of light.”
The Magus waited until Brida had gone down the stairs. There was a bus to Dublin in the next half hour, so there was no need for him to worry about her. Then he went out into the garden and performed the ritual he performed every night. He was used to doing it, but sometimes he found it hard to achieve the necessary concentration. Tonight he was particularly distracted.
When the ritual was over, he sat down on the doorstep and looked up at the sky. He thought about Brida. He could see her on the bus, with the point of light above her left shoulder and which, because she was his Soul Mate, only he could see. He thought how eager she must be to conclude a search that had started the day she was born. He thought how cold and distant she had been when they arrived at his house, and that this was a good sign. It meant she was confused about her own feelings. She was defending herself from something she couldn’t understand.
He thought, too, somewhat fearfully, that she was in love.
“Everyone finds their Soul Mate, Brida,” he said out loud to the plants in his garden, but deep down, he sensed that he, too,
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despite all his years in the Tradition, still needed to reinforce his faith, and that he was really talking to himself.
“At some point in our lives, we all meet our Soul Mate and recognize him or her,” he went on. “If I were not a Magus and couldn’t see the point of light above your left shoulder, it would take a little longer for me to accept you, but you would fight for me, and one day I would see the special light in your eyes. However, the fact is I am a Magus, and it’s up to me to fight for you, so that all my knowledge is transformed into wisdom.”
He sat for a long time contemplating the night and thinking about Brida traveling back to Dublin on the bus. It was colder than usual. Summer would soon be over.
“There are no risks in Love, as you’ll find out for yourself.
People have been searching for and finding each other for thousands of years.”
Suddenly, he realized that he might be wrong. There was always a risk, a single risk: that one person might meet with more than one Soul Mate in the same incarnation, as had happened millennia before.
F
