Wi n t e r a n d S p r i n g

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Over the next two months, Wicca initiated Brida into the first mysteries of witchcraft. According to her, women could learn these things more quickly than men, because each month they experienced in their own bodies the complete cycle of nature: birth, life, and death, the “Cycle of the Moon” as she called it.

Brida had to buy a new notebook and record in it any psychi-cal experiences she’d had since her first meeting with Wicca. The notebook always had to be kept up-to-date and must bear on its cover a five-pointed star, which associated everything written in it with the Tradition of the Moon. Wicca told her that all witches owned such a book, known as a Book of Shadows, in homage to their sisters who had died during the four hundred years that the witch hunt lasted.

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“Why do I need to do all this?”

“We have to awaken the Gift. Without it, you will know only the Minor Mysteries. The Gift is your way of serving the world.”

Brida had to reserve one relatively unused corner of her house for a kind of miniature oratory in which a candle should be kept burning day and night. The candle, according to the Tradition of the Moon, was the symbol of the four elements and contained within itself the earth of the wick, the water of the paraffin, the fire that burned, and the air that allowed the fire to burn. The candle was also important as a way of reminding her that she had a mission to fulfill and that she was engaged on that mission. Only the candle should be visible; everything else should be hidden away on a shelf or in a drawer. From the Middle Ages on, the Tradition of the Moon had demanded that witches surround their activities with absolute secrecy, for there were several prophecies warning that Darkness would return at the end of the millennium.

Whenever Brida came home and saw the candle flame, she felt a strange, almost sacred responsibility.

Wicca told her that she must always pay attention to the sound of the world. “You can hear it wherever you are,” she said. “It’s a noise that never stops, which is there on mountaintops, in cities, in the sky, and at the bottom of the ocean. This noise—which is like a vibration—is the Soul of the World transforming itself and traveling toward the light. Any witch must be keenly aware of this, because she is an important part of that journey.”

Wicca also explained that the Ancients spoke to our world through symbols. Even if no one was listening, even if the lan-

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guage of symbols had been forgotten by almost everyone, the Ancients never ceased talking.

“Are they beings like us?” Brida asked one day.

“We are them. And suddenly we understand everything that we learned in our past lives, and everything that the great sages left written on the Universe. Jesus said: ‘The Kingdom of God is as if a man should scatter seed upon the ground and should sleep and rise night and day, and the seed should sprout and grow, he knows not how.’

“The human race drinks always from this same inexhaustible fountain, and even when everyone says it is doomed, it still finds a way to survive. It survived when the apes drove the men from the trees and when the waters covered Earth. It will survive when everyone is preparing for the final catastrophe.

“We are responsible for the Universe, because we are the Universe.”

The more time Brida spent with Wicca, the more aware she became of what a very pretty woman she was.

Wicca continued to teach Brida the Tradition of the Moon.

She told her to find a two-edged dagger with an undulat-ing blade like a flame. Brida tried in various shops, but there was nothing suitable. In the end, Lorens solved the problem by asking a metallurgical chemistry engineer, who worked at the university,

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to make such a blade. Then he himself carved a wooden handle and gave the dagger to Brida as a gift. It was his way of saying that he respected her search.

The dagger was consecrated by Wicca in a complicated ritual involving magical words, charcoal designs drawn on the blade, and a few blows with a wooden spoon. The dagger was to be used as a prolongation of her own arm, keeping the energy of her body concentrated in the blade. Fairy godmothers used a wand for the same purpose, and magi used a sword.

When Brida expressed her surprise at the charcoal and the wooden spoon, Wicca said that in the days of witch hunts, witches were forced to use materials that could be mistaken for ordinary everyday objects. The tradition of the dagger, the charcoal, and the wooden spoon had survived, while the actual materials once used by the Ancients had been lost entirely.

Brida learned how to burn incense and how to use the dagger inside magic circles. There was a ritual she had to perform whenever the moon changed its phase; she would place a cup of water on the windowsill so that the moon was reflected in the surface. Then she would stand so that her own face was reflected in the water and the moon’s reflection was right in the middle of her forehead. When she was completely focused, she would cut the water with the dagger, causing the reflections to break up and form smaller ones.

This water had to be drunk immediately, and then the power of the moon would grow inside her.

“None of this makes sense,” Brida said once. Wicca ignored

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the remark, for she had once thought exactly the same thing, but she remembered Jesus’ words about the things that grow inside each of us without our understanding how or why.

“It doesn’t matter if it makes sense or not,” she told her.

“Think of the Dark Night. The more you do this, the more the Ancients will communicate with you. They will do so initially in ways you cannot understand, because only your soul will be listening, but one day, the voices will be heard again.”

Brida didn’t want to hear voices, she wanted to find her Soul Mate, but she said nothing of this to Wicca.

She was forbidden from returning to the past again. According to Wicca, this was rarely necessary.

“Don’t use the cards to read the future either. The cards are to be used only for growth without words, the kind of growth that occurs imperceptibly.”

Brida had to spread the cards out on a table three times a week and sit looking at them. Occasionally she had visions, but they were usually incomprehensible. When she complained about this, Wicca said that the visions had a meaning so deep that she was incapable of understanding it.

“And why shouldn’t I use the cards to read the future?”

“Only the present has power over our lives,” replied Wicca.

“When you read the future in the cards, you are bringing the future into the present, and that can cause serious harm. The present could confuse your future.”

Once a week, they went to the wood, and Wicca taught her apprentice the secrets of herbs. For Wicca, everything in the world

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bore God’s signature, especially plants. Certain leaves resembled the heart and were good for heart disease, while flowers that resembled eyes could cure diseases of the eye. Brida began to understand that many herbs really did bear a close resemblance to human organs, and in a book on folk medicine that Lorens borrowed from the university library she found research indicating that the beliefs of country people and witches could well be right.

“God placed his pharmacy in the woods and fields,” Wicca said one day when they were resting under a tree, “so that everyone could enjoy good health.”

Brida knew that her teacher had other apprentices, but she never met them—the dog always barked when her time with Wicca was up. However, she had passed other people on the stairs: an older woman, a girl about her own age, and a man in a suit. Brida listened discreetly to their steps until the creaking floorboards above betrayed their destination: Wicca’s apartment.

One day, Brida risked asking about these other students.

“Witchcraft is based on collective strength,” Wicca told her.