“We’ve lost our ability to live with the secrets of the world,”
she said to Lorens. “And yet there they are before us. The reason I want to be a witch is so that I can see those secrets.”
On the appointed day, Brida went to the wood. She walked among the trees, feeling the magical presence of the spirits of nature. About fifteen hundred years ago, that wood had been the sacred place of the Druids, until St. Patrick drove the snakes from Ireland, and the Druid cults disappeared. Nevertheless, respect for that place had passed from generation to generation and, even now, the villagers both respected and feared it.
She found Wicca in the clearing, wrapped in her cloak. There were four other people with her, all wearing ordinary clothes and all of them women. In the place where she had once noticed ashes, a fire was burning. Brida looked at the fire and for some reason
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felt afraid. She didn’t know if it was because of that part of Loni which she carried inside her or because she had known fire in her other incarnations.
More women arrived. Some were her age and others were older than Wicca. Altogether, there were nine.
“I didn’t invite the men today. We are here waiting for the kingdom of the Moon.”
The kingdom of the Moon was the night.
They stood around the fire, talking about the most trivial things in the world, and Brida felt as if she’d been invited to a tea party with a lot of old gossips, although the setting was rather different.
However, as soon as the sky filled up with stars, the atmosphere changed completely. Wicca didn’t need to call for silence; gradually, the conversation died, and Brida wondered to herself if they’d only just noticed the presence of the fire and the forest.
After a brief silence, Wicca spoke.
“On this night, once a year, the world’s witches gather together to pray and pay homage to our forebears. According to the Tradition, on the tenth moon of the year, we gather round a fire, which was life and death to our persecuted sisters.”
Brida produced a wooden spoon from beneath her cloak.
“Here is the symbol,” she said, showing the spoon to everyone.
The women remained standing and held hands. Then, raising their joined hands, they heard Wicca’s prayer.
“May the blessing of the Virgin Mary and of her son Jesus be
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upon our heads tonight. In our bodies sleeps the Soul Mate of our ancestors. May the Virgin Mary bless them.
“May she bless us because we are women and live in a world in which men love and understand us more and more. Yet still we bear on our bodies the marks of past lives, and those marks still hurt.
“May the Virgin Mary free us from those marks and put an end forever to our sense of guilt. We feel guilty when we go out to work because we’re leaving our children in order to earn money to feed them. We feel guilty when we stay at home because it seems we’re not making the most of our freedom. We feel guilty about everything, because we have always been kept far from decision making and from power.
“May the Virgin Mary remind us always that it was the women who stayed with Jesus when all the men fled and denied their faith. That it was the women who wept while He carried the cross and who waited at His feet at the hour of His death. That it was the women who visited the empty tomb, and that we have no reason to feel guilty.
“May the Virgin Mary remind us always that we were burned and persecuted because we preached the Religion of Love. When others were trying to stop time with the power of sin, we gathered together to hold forbidden festivals in which we celebrated what was still beautiful in the world. Because of this we were condemned and burned in the public squares.
“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.
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“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 il-
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lusions 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—
